Analytics Society

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Recognize creative and unique developments, applications or combinations of analytical techniques. The prizes promote the awareness of the value of analytics techniques in unusual applications, or in creative combination to provide unique insights and/or business value. The prizes are not meant to recognize strictly theoretical advances, although theoretical advances might be an enabler of innovative applications.

INFORMS and SAS in 2017 are once again happy to offer a scholarship program for the INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research. This competitive program, supported by SAS® and sponsored by the Analytics Society of INFORMS, recognizes one outstanding student who would like to learn more about the practice of analytics at this annual conference by covering the costs of attending the event and additional networking opportunities. Honorable Mention winners may be named if other applicants merit special recognition.

As our world population increases and arable land decreases, it becomes vital to improve the productivity of the agricultural land available. Companies like Syngenta strive to provide varieties of their crops to meet this need.
Every year farmers have to make decisions about which soybean seeds to plant given information about different soybean varieties and knowledge about the soil and climate at their respective farms. These annual decisions are critical - after a variety is planted, the decision is irreversible. Unusual weather patterns can have disastrous impacts on crops.
A highly desirable variety may be in short supply and unavailable for farmers. To ensure there is enough seed of the desired varieties for farmers, it is critical to evaluate which variety or varieties are more likely to be chosen by farmers from a growing region.Using the provided variety, growing region and exogenous datasets, participants are challenged to predict which soybean seed variety or mix of up to five varieties in appropriate proportions is more likely to be chosen by farmers from a growing region.